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Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

bbc.com

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Re: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

#201

Post by Zenst »

actionscripted wrote: post #91

If you ever wonder about the extent of Russia's online efforts consider that the comments on this HN thread might be part of things. Not saying anything in here is good/bad/other but you rarely see this level of flagged and down-voted comments in a HN thread.

Until we have evidence that would carry in a court of law and assign blame at a person/country - divides in opinion will prevail and assigning those divides into categories serves no constructive purpose beyond distract from debate upon the facts.

Re: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

#202

Post by TaylorAlexander »

ogogmad wrote: post #135
actionscripted wrote: post #91

If you ever wonder about the extent of Russia's online efforts consider that the comments on this HN thread might be part of things. Not saying anything in here is good/bad/other but you rarely see this level of flagged and down-voted comments in a HN thread.

I think many Russian people, especially those who watch or read mainly Russian news, hold such views with complete sincerity. The internal propaganda is quite effective.

Yep and this is true in the USA too.

Re: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

#203

Post by krick »

mikeyouse wrote: post #187
krick wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I agree, even though it seems to be an unpopular opinion. I don't have a strong opinion on that, and honestly I don't really care, but it looks way too weird. I mean, people mention Litvinenko and Skripal. With Litvinenko there really was no doubt with regards to both if he was assassinated and why he was assassinated. Whole story with Skripal was weird, it was a huge scandal which very much served UK (or anybo…

> Basically, I don't see why would his "enemies" (i.e. Putin&friends) even care about him. His constantly embarrassing exposes where he demonstrates how much money they've fleeced from the Russian people don't count? e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE1iw4seYt0&list=PLuBu40P6jU... Or his videos demonstrating widespread voting fraud that's keeping "Putin and Friends" in power?

Oh, come on. I don't know if you are Russian: if so, I would ask you to honestly think if you believe this is a threat. I personally don't. If you are not, I'd say that it probably would be a notable thing in USA, but Russia has a specific culture in a sense that nothing of this sort is perceived by anybody as a big news. Everyone always assumes that any rich person is a thief and a crook (even if they are not), and that everybody in a government is extremely rich (and a thief, and a crook squared) (even if they are not). Nobody gets surprised by anything of the sort.

I like watching these videos, BTW, because I like how they are made, it's pretty fun. But are they "hurting" anybody? I doubt so.

A single assassination of Navalny gives much more bad publicity, than 100 years of Navalny & ФБК making "Он вам не Димон" kind of movies. If they care about the latter, they surely don't want the former.

Re: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

#204

Post by ardy42 »

nostromo wrote: post #166
nafizh wrote: post #155

There will never be a power vacuum in world politics. If it’s not going to be US, it’s going to be China and/or Russia. I have been thinking quite a lot how will that world look. Will it be better or worse?

Russia’s economy is smaller than Canada’s and per capita it’s citizens are poorer than Poles. Russia is not a world power and hasn’t been for a while.

> Russia’s economy is smaller than Canada’s and per capita it’s citizens are poorer than Poles.

> Russia is not a world power and hasn’t been for a while.

IIRC, they know that. That's why one of their main foreign policy objectives is to sow division and discord. Russia is weak compared to NATO as a whole, but it's strong compared to most individual NATO countries.

Re: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

#205

Post by anonAndOn »

rumanator wrote: post #119
jamescontrol wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It’s likely the reason why we have seen terrorist attacks where people drive into crowds of people. Cars and trucks is everywhere, its easily accessible. I would argue that the other way around is the dangerous assumption, that people will NOT use the easiest accessible means to hurt other people.

> Why? Because the goal is reaching the goal, not the process. Undoubtedly, if s terrorist group has access to this stuff, they won't reject the idea of using it just because driving a van or yielding a knife might appear simpler. We're talking about lines of thinking that planned hijacking three commercial airplanes simultaneously to fly them into high visibility targets. How is spreading poison something that's out…

nitpick: they hijacked FOUR planes but the fourth group of hijackers couldn't control the mob about to rip them apart so aborted the mission. [0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93

Re: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

#206

Post by hindsightbias »

sneak wrote: post #43

This is the second time they've done this, IIRC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Skripal It's pretty much the ultimate flex, no? "We can kill anyone we want in any country, and you can't do shit about it."

Putin could poison the opposition candidate in the US and it would just be fake news.

The only thing stopping him is the Chinese would probably see that as open season in the US and retaliate.

Re: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

#207

Post by throwaway8941 »

actuator wrote: post #198
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By matching what happens in Belarus now to Russia. It was long believed, even in US, that Lukashenka had the majority. In reality, he faked all elections since 1994. Once his deeds became hard to ignore even for pathetically peaceful Belarusians, all the population turned against him. Gosh, the exit poll in my voting station recorded only one vote for Lukashenka among 358. I was there watching the exit poll for a cou…

The election results had him at ~80% votes, if he is really rigging elections, would he really go for such unrealistic numbers. If I have just 40% support, I might go for showing it to be about 55%, so that it at least looks close. I think he did rig elections but he might have had majority already, which makes his numbers look so unrealistic or he is just plain stupid to not even rig elections to make them look beli…

>would he really go for such unrealistic numbers

I am from Kazakhstan. If you've ever heard of it, would you consider it to be an autocratic state? Because according to the official results our beloved leader received 98% of votes in an election a few years back. Now that's an unrealistic number for sure.

Re: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

#208

Post by toxik »

krick wrote: post #173
toxik wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have presented doubt about the given hypothesis without offering an alternative. Putin & co. is the simplest explanation. Why question it? Who else would stand to gain from this? Because they do gain from it: intimidating the opposition is the name of the game in a dictatorship.

Alternative was given by the poster I was answering to: a false flag. Who has anything to gain? Basically anybody, who needs any reason to blame Russia for everything, which is a very popular thing to do for the last 10 years at least, and getting more and more popular lately. Intimidating the opposition? I already said why I don't buy it. There is no real opposition to intimidate. Navalny does what he does for the l…

Yes and then Occam’s razor.

Your explanation requires too many assumptions, and fails to explain other facts of history - such as other people having been poisoned, or Putin et al doing other wildly unpopular things just for the sake of it.

Russia habitually invades the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish waters _just to show that they can_.

Your reasoning boils down to “if you can think of an explanation, it’s wrong”. The CIA furthermore has very little need for making Russia look bad right now. Russia is doing that all in its own.

Re: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

#209

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

stared wrote: post #183
nostromo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia’s economy is smaller than Canada’s and per capita it’s citizens are poorer than Poles. Russia is not a world power and hasn’t been for a while.

Russia has the ambition to be great again. And nukes.

And it is actually very sad, lots of their working class, really believe that Putin actually is successfully pulling it off.

Re: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok

#210

Post by luckylion »

non-entity wrote: post #184
site-packages1 wrote: post #177

What's going on here with all the new accounts and dead comments?

Its actually not all that uncommon on controversial threads. I personally don't beleive its bots as much as people who create new accounts so they can break the "flamewar rule"

As even completely normal comments such as your own are quickly downvoted, it might also just be people who don't want their main account flagged for moderator attention & limitations just because a bunch of people violently disagree with them.
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